Need

Lately, I have been quite convicted about only loving and caring for people who will love me back. Unlike myself, Jesus loved unconditionally and he blessed people because of their membership in humanity rather than their likelihood of returning blessings. In order to develop this spiritual muscle, I decided I would do something nice for someone who probably would not return the favor.

When I talked to several of my friends about this, they wanted to do it too. It turns out that many believers struggle to love people unconditionally.

So, last Sunday afternoon 4 of my friends and I went downtown to buy lunch for a homeless person. We were anxious to find someone and get to know them. We were hoping to establish an ongoing relationship with this person.

On the way we imagined what it would be like if we were homeless. Then we thought about what we would do if two car loads of young men and one short, bald guy got out of their cars and started walking up to us. I figured that I would think I was about to be abducted as part of a secret medical experiment. I tend to think like that because I have an active conspiratorial imagination. We amended our plan. We were going to do this in smaller groups.

Even with our amended plan, all we found out that day was that Sunday afternoons are not good times to find homeless people in our town. The only man out that day had already eaten a hamburger just before we invited him to lunch. Either that or he preferred hunger to being in a medical experiment.

The five of us went to eat by ourselves licking our wounds. We were concerned because we knew that our motives were right on. As a group we decided to get help from people who care for society's cast offs all the time. We assigned a group member to talk to some representatives of a community agency about how we could help and report back to us.

Being the impatient person that I am, I decided not to wait. So, one afternoon last week I went to the library to grade papers and to meet people. Although libraries may be great places to find homeless people, they are not great places to meet them. I saw one man sitting reading a magazine and thought about interrupting his reading to have a conversation, but we were in a library. Conversations were not allowed. I had not considered this in my plans.

After I finished grading my papers, I went out in the main hallway and waited for a while. My 10 year old son was with me and was quite curious about why I wanted to just sit in the lobby of the library. Just as I was about to explain everything to my son, the man I had seen earlier got up and began walking to leave the library.

I waited, hoping I would have the opportunity to start a conversation with this man. He came out and stood right in front of me. I wondered, "what would Jesus say?" All I could manage was a weak, "hows it goin'." He looked at me suspiciously as my son was saying, "Dad, can we leave?" I just stood there wondering what do I have in common with this man?

He reached into a pocket on his jacket, pulled out a package of tobacco and rolled a cigarette. My son's eyes grew wide with curiosity. I stammered again, "how's it goin'?"

"Fine," he said as he finished rolling his cigarette. He turned and walked out the door.

I looked at my son and realized that I had a lot of explaining to do. I spent a good part of that evening explaining to my son that I felt like I had to learn to love people like Jesus loved them. My son said that he understood and I was grateful for that.

Here is the funny thing about this situation. After being convicted about the need to love people who won't love me back some wierd, unexplainable things began to happen. The students at my school began to behave better and we were able to get more things done in our class time. I began to notice more opportunities to help people. I began to get more excited about spending time in fellowship with believers. All of this even though I was unsuccessful buying lunch for a person in need.